Back to Modern History SourceBook Modern History Sourcebook: Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinism, 1857 Herbert Spencer (18201903) was thinking about ideas of evolution and progress before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859). Nonetheless, his ideas received a major boost from Darwin's theories and the general application of ideas such as adaptation and survival of the fittest ...

Critics of evolutionary theory very often misunderstand the philosophical issues of the speciality known as the philosophy of science.